Police: Video shows 2 cars during Vegas attack

By TAMI ABDOLLAH and KEN RITTER, Associated Press

Friday, March 1, 2013

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A video camera on a taxi dashboard captured a black Range Rover and a Maserati sports car weaving around each other during a shooting that left an aspiring rapper and two other people dead in a spectacular crash on the Las Vegas Strip, a police report states.

The report was released after Ammar Harris, 26, a self-described pimp, was arrested Thursday in Los Angeles, ending a multi-stare manhunt that began after the Feb. 21 shooting.

The report doesn’t say exactly what sparked the vehicle-to-vehicle shooting that led to the fiery crash at the intersection where the Bellagio, Bally’s, Flamingo and Caesars Palace casino resorts are located.

The police report says video, audio and witness accounts show that Harris briefly spoke with Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr. in the valet area of the Aria resort minutes before Harris pulled his black SUV alongside the Maserati and fired at least six shots.

With Cherry mortally wounded at the wheel, the sports car slammed into a taxi, which burst into flames, killing its driver and passenger.

A passenger in the Maserati was wounded in the arm, and four other people were injured in a chain-reaction crash that followed the shooting at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road.

The report describes the Range Rover spinning its tires to catch the Maserati, and a horn sounding as the SUV pulled into its path then alongside the sports car.

A shot was fired from the passenger side of the SUV into the driver’s side of the Maserati, followed by two shots and then three shots as the cars jockeyed into several positions, the report states.

The investigation was still active, and video, audio and witness accounts obtained won’t be made public until the case reaches court, Las Vegas police Officer Laura Meltzer said Friday.

Harris was apprehended in a unit at Archview Luxury Apartments in the Studio City area of Los Angeles. He remained jailed pending a Monday extradition hearing in Los Angeles.

Gail Gaghagen, a resident of the complex, believes she saw Harris on Tuesday sitting alone on a weight bench in the gym. He was dressed in shorts and a tank top, she said, adding that she did not know he was the man wanted in the attack.

“I looked at him and he looked at me and that was it,” she said.

A woman in the apartment where Harris was found was questioned but wasn’t charged with a crime, police said.

Harris, a convicted felon in South Carolina, is shown in Internet posts with fists full of money boasting of a high-rolling lifestyle with prostitutes in Miami and Las Vegas.

Authorities issued a warning to anyone who covets such a lifestyle or turns to violence in Las Vegas.

“I hope anyone out there watching understands clearly if you live in this city, if you work in this city, or you visit this city and act like this person, we will find you, we will prosecute you, and we will send you to prison,” Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie said.

Two days after the shooting, police found the SUV parked at an apartment complex two blocks east of the crash scene.

Detectives fielded hundreds of tips and reviewed surveillance video showing the disagreement between Harris and Cherry. They also listened to audio recordings from nearby taxis of the gunshots and obtained traffic camera video of the Maserati speeding through the intersection.

The day after the shooting, prosecutors obtained a warrant for Harris’ arrest on three murder counts, one attempted murder count and several shooting charges.

Las Vegas police also said they found and talked with all three women who were in the SUV with Harris at the time, including Tineesha Lashun Howard, 22, of Miami. None of the women was charged with a crime.

The discovery that Howard, who has a history of prostitution arrests, had left Los Angeles on Wednesday on an eastbound bus was one of the factors that led investigators to find Harris in Studio City, Steiber said.